Colo. victims mourned at funerals in 3 states

Updated 8:54 PM ET

(AP) SPRINGFIELD, Ohio - A man who saved his girlfriend's life at the Colorado movie shooting was remembered for his selfless sacrifice Saturday, while an aspiring sportscaster was praised for her boundless energy and an Air Force reservist as a good friend.

The girlfriend who Matt McQuinn saved by taking three bullets aimed at her wept as pastors spoke of the senselessness of the shooting spree at the suburban Denver theater where 12 people were killed just more than a week ago.

Mourners packed a church in this western Ohio town where McQuinn came from, while family and friends gathered in San Antonio on the same day to remember Jessica Ghawi and a private funeral service was held at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colo., for Staff Sgt. Jesse Childress.

23 Photos

The Aurora shooting victims

More funerals are set for next week.

When gunfire broke out in the Aurora theater, McQuinn, 27, dove in front of his girlfriend, Samantha Yowler, and was shot three times.

Yowler, who was shot in the knee and survived, arrived at McQuinn's funeral on crutches Saturday and wept quietly with his parents and other family during the funeral. Neither she nor his parents addressed mourners at the Maiden Lane Church of God.

Pastor Herb Shaffer, who is also McQuinn's uncle, said his nephew had been a gift to his family since he was born, and that his actions in Colorado were just one example of his selflessness.

McQuinn called his mother three times the day before she had surgery because he was upset that he couldn't be there in person, Shaffer said. When he was just 7, he put his arm around his younger cousin because he was worried she wasn't having a good day, he said.

Then he talked about McQuinn's greatest sacrifice of all, saving Yowler, whom Shaffer described as the love of his nephew's life.

"In moments of crisis, true character comes out," he said. "His immediate response was to protect the woman he loved."

"Matt's death is a sudden loss, one that has produced many questions in your minds," Pastor Dan Fiorini said. "I know you're asking in your heart of hearts, why? Why was Matt there? Why was a gunman allowed to enter that theater? Why was he able to purchase guns and ammunition so easily? Why didn't God do something?"

Fiorini said he couldn't answer any of those questions.

"We can wrestle with the whys of this tragedy for eternity and never come up with an answer," he said.

Shaffer told mourners that the shooting forever changed them.

"Our lives will never be the same," he said. "The words Aurora, Cinema 16 shooting, Batman, will never mean the same thing, and we'll be reminded of Matt every time we hear them."

Mourners at Ghawi's funeral also touched briefly on the massacre.

"If this coward could have done this with this much hate, imagine what we can do with this much love," her brother said at the Community Bible Church in San Antonio.

But most of the service focused on the life and energy of the aspiring 24-year-old sports journalist.

"What we will not do today is focus on how she left us," said Peter Burns, a friend from Colorado, reading a statement from Ghawi's mother, Sandy. "Jess was a force to be reckoned with. She was a jolt of lightning. A whirlwind. A Labrador puppy running clumsily with innocent joy."

Burns talked of the funny way Ghawi sneezed, her near-addiction to Nutella chocolate, how she was sloppy and always lovable.

Ghawi's boyfriend, Jay Meloff, note that others described her as "a tough, redheaded spitfire," and she was, but that he also saw "a beautiful, warm-hearted and passionate woman with a capacity for love. ... She was as mushy as they come."

He said they were looking forward to building a future together and he also encouraged others to do as she did and "live each day fully."

"She drank in life," he said.

Ghawi was a pretty, blue-eyed redhead who moved to Colorado about a year ago. She had survived a June 2 shooting at a Toronto mall that left two dead and several wounded. She blogged about the experience, writing that it reminded her "how fragile life was."

"I was reminded that we don't know when or where our time on Earth will end. When or where we will breathe our last breath," Ghawi wrote.

Following the funeral for Childress, 29, about 200 people attended a private burial service at Fort Logan National Cemetery southwest of Denver, Veterans Affairs spokesman Paul Sherbo said.

Friends and colleagues have described the Air Force cyber-systems operator as a good friend, experienced and knowledgeable. Childress was from Thornton, Colo., and worked at Buckley Air Force Base.

James Holmes, a 24-year-old former doctoral student studying neuroscience, is accused of opening fire on the theater, killing McQuinn, Ghawi, Childress and nine others, and wounding 58. He is due to be formally charged Monday in Colorado.

[hypnotoad72]

We all mourn.

But we're becoming very shallow and emo as a society... since we seem to prefer to cry than to work to prevent future issues...

Still, as somebody benefited from buying Hitler's car, Bonnie and Clyde's guns, expect nothing to change and Holmes' gun to be sold at a tidy profit as well.

[Jack575857686906858]

Total BS!

We do not all mourn -- some losers even rejoice.

Many are working to prevent or at least limit "future issues".

Hopefully we will do less of what does not work, and more of what does work. Why not do your part?

And Holmes' gun will not be sold.

[talkin2u924]

I pray for the victims and their families. I am so sorry for them and the hurt they must feel. I also find it ironic and sad that the very first medal won at the Olympics, a place where the world comes together, is in a sport involving a gun....shooting. It's a very sad state when the it's shooting of a gun that wins the first medal on a day when we mourn the loss of life because of a gun. Very very sad.

[hypnotoad72]

It's even more sad that our society has done nothing to fix these problems...

Oh, I pray for the victims and every other decent person in this country, but in a country where we parade vermin as being celebrities... right down to big news articles saying how guns from infamous bank robbers a century ago are being auctioned (Bonnie and Clyde), all of this praying is as empty as vain as everything else going on.

Some of us are tired of crying, you see.

[Jack575857686906858]

I feel sad that the victims were deliberately denied the option of self-defense, both by their government and the business they patronized -- they all seem like trustworthy individuals to me, as I read their stories.

And I wonder what you would have been sad about in the era characterized by the rule of men, not law -- when property changed hands with the flash of a sword, and life ended with a casual order.

No guns back then -- or individual rights, either. Torture was the rule, not the exception -- it was trial by jury that was rare.

And BTW -- have you noticed that the first American spree-killing was in 1949?

I wonder why random mass shootings were unknown when guns and drugs were COMPLETELY unregulated, but suddenly began occurring shortly after hyper-realistic violence in mass media became common.

I am assuming you are really looking for answers here, and not just playing on our emotions whilst grinding a political axe...